Arts, Briefly; Writer Denied Residency

By FELICIA R. LEE; Compiled by Ben Sisario

Published: February 4, 2006

Her writing awards include the Pushcart Prize, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Plimpton Prize for New Writers, and her letters of support came from Salman Rushdie and David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. But it wasn't enough for the United States government. This week, an appeal from the Chinese-born writer Yiyun Li for permanent residency on the grounds of ''extraordinary ability in the arts'' was denied, Ms. Li said yesterday. A letter she received on Monday dismissed her appeal because, she said, when she first filed her petition in 2004, ''the very high standard set by Congress'' had not been met: she had not yet received her O'Connor award, and her book ''A Thousand Years of Good Prayers'' (Random House, 2005) had not been published. The rejection of the appeal was first reported yesterday in The Washington Post. ''Of course, I'm very sad,'' said Ms. Li, 33, who has written for The New York Times Magazine and The Paris Review and who teaches creative writing at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. She is married to a Chinese man who is also not a citizen but has two young children who were born in the United States. ''It's a long process,'' she said. ''I think we're going to try another petition with Mills sponsorship.'' FELICIA R. LEE